Evil. I am cast upon a horrible desolate Island, void of all hope of Recovery.Good. But I am alive, and not drown'd as all my Ship'd Company was.

It happen'd one day about noon going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listen'd, I look'd round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any thing; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one.

As might be expected, Daniel Defoe's classic castaway adventure has been adapted into many films and television shows. But probably not as many as you might.... more

Robinson Crusoe

COMMENTARY

Not one of my desert island books

The biggest mystery about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe may
be why it is so well known, so fondly remembered, so enshrined in our
culture.

As novels go, this is one dreadful piece of work. The writing is
amateurish, the narrative poorly paced, the plot implausible and the
characters sketchy, if not outright abhorrent. Not to mention its racism
and colonialism, which we'll get to later.

So why has it been so popular for so long?

For one thing, it is often cited as the first English novel (though
the French and Spanish had produced novels over a century earlier) and
as such it is bound to be somewhat important in literary history.

Suspicions are that most readers have been exposed to Defoe's story
in only abridged and illustrated editions, in which the above problems
are smoothed out or expunged altogether, or through the many literary
or cinematic take-offs on the story. Perhaps most people haven't actually read Defoe—they only think
they have. I can't see many folks of the modern era struggling through the awful original text and coming away enthralled.

A reader taking up the actual book today may not realize Crusoe's
sojourn on the deserted island is intended by Defoe to be only the greatest
among many adventures his protagonist experiences in his world travels.
In Robinson Crusoe, before he is stranded on the island, Crusoe
has already embarked on trading ventures around Africa, been captured
and enslaved by a Moorish pirate, escaped on a small boat in the Atlantic,
and become a plantation owner in Brazil. After rescue from his island
ordeal, he becomes engaged in adventures in France of all places, where
he is attacked by wolves. In the sequel, The Further Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, our supposed hero revisits the island to set right
the community he had established there but spends most of his time sailing
around the eastern world, fighting pirates and authorities alike, travelling
through Asian countries to ridicule their cultures and destroy their
non-Christian religions—and making profit wherever he can, including
by selling opium to the Chinese.

But it is the island story that dominates the original novel and
our collective memory of Robinson Crusoe. The character sets out to
Africa on behalf of a Brazilian consortium of plantation owners to get
slaves but a series of misadventures lands him, the only survivor of
a shipwreck, on a shore somewhere off the northeast coast of South America.
The rest of the story about how he establishes shelter, finds food,
fends off cannibals and marauding Spaniards, and befriends a supposed savage
he names Friday (and requires to call him "Master" in return) is well
known.

What may not be so well known is how drawn out this part of the
book is with excruciating detail. Crusoe is on the island for twenty-eight
years, most of which is spent watching crops grow and making lists—lists
of his provisions, lists of his daily routines, lists of how many natives
he's killed....

Defoe's story was said to be inspired by the example of a Scottish
sailor Alexander Selkirk who was marooned on a Pacific island for four
years. Too bad Defoe did not adopt the same timeframe, although this
would not have given Crusoe enough time to build a miniature empire
on the island.

Despite all this criticism though, the book is still worth reading—at
least in an abridged edition—to get an idea of how some people thought
in those days. And for historical reasons: to see how the novel form
developed from this early British attempt.

Also, bear in mind that the adventure was not only tremendously exciting
for the reading public in Defoe's time but it laid down a template that's
been followed or adapted by an entire genre of literature, films and
cartoons since then, usually more competently produced and without the
morally odious context.

So there are sound reasons for trying Robinson Crusoe. But
it is not one of the books I'd want on a desert island.